Tuesday, December 19, 2006

A Word on Carols

Despite the recent mockery on my blog, I like carols; they're a repository of some very old and beautiful melodies. That being said, the worst carols tend to get repeated over and over again (Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer).

The best carols are the old ones, with the exception of 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas'. I don't know who was responsible for that brainfart, but probably whoever it was probably got beaten up by his fellow renaissance minstrels on a regular basis. You know ...

"Hey Reynard! There's the fooker that wrote that Merry Christmas piece of shite! Let's bash the fooker's fooking face in!"

"Aye, verily, and fooking right!"

The best modern one might be Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas', simply because it's so bizarre seeing him and David Bowie singing that song together - yes, the music video does exist! Almost any carol with Santa Claus in it is almost guaranteed to be crap, mostly because the Santa Claus cult popped up in the 20th century. ' (Sorry old boy, but you know it's right). 'Santa Claus is Coming' is dreadful.

But then you get pieces like 'Three Kings', 'Hark, the Herald Angels', 'Come All Ye Faithful', 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' and 'Good King Wenceslas' which are grouse (especially for the archaic English expressions) and especially 'In Dulce Jubilo', which is especially cool to sing because of the Latin phrases.

UPDATE! - Actually, turns out the song Bowie and Bing sung together was 'Peace on Earth' and 'Little Drummer Boy'. I still don't mind 'White Christmas', though like most carols it gets repeated too many times.